


Darling, we'll be good as new by dawn

by kitty_shcherbatskaya



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, F/F, in which Laura probably shouldn't be allowed to drive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 13:11:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4350095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitty_shcherbatskaya/pseuds/kitty_shcherbatskaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Oh my god, I just got hit by a car. You ran me over! Jesus Christ!”</p>
<p>Laura Hollis is in a hurry. Unfortunately someone should have warned the girl she runs down on her way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darling, we'll be good as new by dawn

**Author's Note:**

> I think this was born out of a prompt I found somewhere on tumblr some months ago and it finally inspired me to give fanfiction a try. Title from 'By Dawn', by Ellie Makes Music.

Laura groaned in dismay as the blare of her ringtone dragged her into consciousness. _07:07_ , flashed the green digits of her alarm clock mockingly into the darkness of the room. She flapped clumsily after her ancient phone on the bedside table, eventually flipping it open and mumbling a hello down the line. Her boss’ voice, sounding similarly sleepy, echoed in her ear.

“It's your big break Hollis. There's been a 6 car pile up on the Calgary trail so get to the district hospital, like, now and start making a report for editing this afternoon. Spielsdorf’s going to meet you there for photos.” She couldn't even grumble an affirmative before the phone hung up and she dropped it on her bed, stumbling to the bathroom, trying to muster some motivation for the job. If it was her big break, she probably wouldn't be the office coffee runner any more.  

It was approaching 7.30 by the time Laura had showered and shoved a jacket and jeans on, feeling a lot more functional and a lot more nervous about what was waiting at the hospital. She had to get this right. She had to prove she’s good enough to take the big stories, even at 7 on a dark Sunday morning in November. Toast in mouth she rolled into her car and scrabbled with the handbrake, realizing with alarm as she pulled out that the roads were completely iced over. She threw caution to the wind, aware that every second counted in this line of work. Laura wrestled with the stickshift a little too aggressively and swung into the main road, headlights on full beam, highlighting the quiet street and a black-clad figure right in her path _\- holy shit there's someone in the road -_ a white face was caught, frozen, in the harsh beams.

She got a foot to the brake. The thud still made her scream, her car lurching to a halt.

_Out!_

She fell out of the driver's side to the feebly stirring figure before her.

“ _Scheisse! Verdammte scheisse!_ ” The loud shrill voice was a shock in Laura’s ringing ears. She was trying to pick herself up and Laura struggled to help her, all fingers and thumbs and shaking in the frigid air.

“Oh my god, oh my god, are you okay? Jesus - ”

The girl staggered up, Laura's hands under her arms. With a glare, she tried to stop her voice from shaking as she snapped at Laura. “ _Blöde Kuh, pass mal auf -_ ” she blinked and swayed.

Unthinking, Laura bundled her into the car, her feet sliding almost comically on the ice underfoot. “We gotta get you to hospital - hospital?” She repeats loudly, her high school-level German slow and sluggish in the dark awful morning. “ _Bring' Sie ins Krankenhaus!_ ”

By the time she got the girl strapped in and around to her own door Laura was shaking violently. She was fumbling with her seat belt when the girl spoke again, making her jump and miss with the buckle entirely. “Oh my god, I just got hit by a car. You ran me over! Jesus fucking Christ!” At least she could speak English.

Finally Laura got the goddamn seat belt sorted and started the car up again. “Look I’m getting you to the hospital like now, are you bleeding or like is something broken or is your head all fuzzy -” Laura looked over and wished she hadn't. Her victim was pale and young, all black tangled hair and dark wide eyes standing out from white fine boned features - attractive features which were rapidly bruising. She missed her gear and the car crunched, pulling out erratically onto the still empty road. It was Sunday morning, who'd even be out? No-one was supposed to be out.

She asked again if she was okay. That’s what you had to do, right? The girl's eyes were still on her; she could feel their intensity as the car sped up under her white knuckled grip. Their silence was horrible but when it was broken Laura wasn't certain that made things any better.

“I'm fucking peachy, sweetheart,” her passenger bit out sharply, spitting on her leather jacket sleeve. Laura glanced and saw blood on her lips. They swerved. “Christ, watch the fucking road!”

“I'm so sorry, oh my god, you came out of nowhere! I thought there'd be no one out and that corner's so icy I just swung too fast and you were there and I couldn't stop it, I thought you were like dead and it was all my fault -!”

“ _Christus!_ ” The girl clenched her eyes shut for a second. “Can you just shut up and drive?” The shake was leaking out of her voice, despite her strained efforts to keep it steady, and Laura noticed her right arm cradled awkwardly on her lap. She didn't say anything else, just put her foot down. She was lucky her dad had insisted on her taking skidpan lessons before taking her driving test; she did know how to handle the ice, even now, and the ancient Volkswagen flew confidently over it.

Her passenger jerked in the seat next to her and Laura realised with terror that she was struggling to keep her eyes open. She would have shoved her, except she had no idea if that would, like, screw up some broken bone so she awkwardly flapped a hand at her shoulder. “No no no! Don't fall asleep now! Hey!” She had to stay awake. “You never told me your name, what's your name?”

She repeated it, louder, leaning to yell in the poor girl's ear, and stretched across her to wind down her window and let in an annoying chill. Her lolling head jerked, and when she spoke her words were slurred and her slight accent thickened. “Carmilla. 'S Carmilla,” she managed close to Laura's ear. She seemed to realise her danger; her good arm grabbed at Laura's shoulder. This close, Laura could see there was blood matting her hair.

The 15 minutes it took to tear to the district hospital were an ordeal impossibly long in Laura's mind. Keeping her wheels under control on the dangerous winter roads was hard enough - her dad would be proud of her skill, if horrified at her speed - but with a possibly concussed passenger who was about to fall into a coma or something at any second, it became a whole new level of complicated. Laura told her to keep talking.

Carmilla was a grad student in philosophy at the university of Alberta, she gleaned from the girl's shaking indistinct voice. Other than that, she was from somewhere in Europe, Laura missed where, because she kept slipping back into an unfamiliar German dialect. The third time this happened and Laura reminded her timidly that that wasn’t English, she let out a frustrated snarl. “This whole thinking in other languages thing is a lot harder with probable _brain damage_ ,” she snapped.

“How many languages do you know?” Laura, forgetting herself momentarily, was intrigued.

Carmilla tried to shrug, which was at this time a really _terrible_ habit to have and she let out an involuntary gasp of pain.

“Oh my god.” Laura dragged her eyes back to the road. “We're almost there, just hold on!”

When they finally stumbled into the Emergency Care Department at Edmonton District South, Carmilla leaning heavily on her side with Laura’s arm tight around her waist, the chaos that greeted them reminded her of why she was up at 8 am and on her way to hospital on a Sunday in the first place. The pile-up. _Oh no_.  

The receptionist tolerated her word vomit for roughly 3 seconds before taking a look at Carmilla and calling for a doctor, so although Carmilla's head was sagging more and more heavily onto Laura's shoulder, the arrival of a white coat after only a few minutes calmed her panic a little. “Another traffic accident?” He asked wearily as they led Carmilla to a treatment room.

“Yeah,” Laura couldn't help herself, “I kind of ran her down... It was pretty dark though and I was trying to keep my car from skidding on the corner and she was just in the road and -” she glanced at poor Carmilla, roughed up and supporting herself with an arm around Laura’s shoulders, and felt tears prick in the corners of her eyes. She squeezed them tight shut.

The doctor shook his head, gently pulling Carmilla from her to the treatment bed. “It happens, Ms Hollis. I'm relieved you seemed to hit her slowly; you must handle the ice pretty nicely. It's nowhere near as bad as what we've already had this morning…”

She stared helplessly at the scene before her, not really listening. The doctor was cleaning out the gash at Carmilla’s hairline and asking her basic questions; her name, what she did, where she lived, what had happened that morning. Her dark locks hid her face as she replied to him softly, carefully, and Laura tried hard not to cry. At least she'd be okay. At least she was in safe hands now.

Laura jumped as her mobile rang, its harsh tone unwelcome in the quiet room. The doctor lowered the torch he'd been shining into Carmilla's eyes. “You know that's meant to be turned off.” Too late, she was already answering, though it took her a couple of attempts to hit the call accept button.

“Err... hello?”

“I thought chief phoned you an hour ago L,” snapped Betty Spielsdorf in her ear. Betty, two years her senior, was a rather brusque press photographer who worked with her at the newspaper. “Where the fuck are you?”

“Umm, give me a second Betty, be right with you!” covering the mouthpiece with her palm, Laura looked up at where Carmilla was attempting to raise her injured arm under the doctor's watchful eye. “She's not going anywhere is she?”

“Not a chance. We'll need to strap up this arm, your shoulder's been dislocated, and keep you in for a few hours to see how your head's doing, at least.” The doctor offered a tired smile at a stony Carmilla who'd dropped her arm.

“So when can I leave?”

“Noon at the earliest, I'd say. Don't worry, you'll be well looked after. We're all here to help.” His patient looked nothing short of murderous.

Laura guiltily interrupted them. “Yeah, about that, I need to go for a bit, something's kinda come up…” She quailed under two pairs of accusing eyes, the doctor joining in with Carmilla’s default scowl. “Look, I'll definitely be back by noon if you need me again - shall I give you my number?” The doctor scribbled it down and she gave Carmilla an awkward wave as she slipped out of the room, the other girl resolutely unresponsive. She was probably working out how to bust her way out, or something.

She pressed the phone back to her ear in time to receive a “What the fuck, Laura?”  

"I'm coming to you like now Betts, sorry!" she babbled down the line as she hurried back the way she'd come, snapping it shut when she saw the back of Betty's blonde head.

She turned around at Laura's call, camera swinging around her neck. “Why were you already in there? Taking notes or something?” Betty grimaced as they went back inside. “And why do you smell like a fucking ashtray?”

“It's kinda messed up. Can we just get on this now?”

“We could have gotten on this like an hour ago if you weren't so weird -”

"Well I tell you what, instead of being up my ass why don't you tell me about that massive - _bruise_ on your neck and the paint in your hair, have a wild one last night?"

This was normal for her and Betty. This she could manage. She took a deep breath, shutting out Betty's tetchy reply, as they headed over to the emergency wards, trying to push the chaos of the morning out of her head and focus on what she was here to do.

 

* * *

Laura knows that she’s good at her job. And more than that, she cares about her job. She’s always wanted to find answers; to dig a narrative out of what seems to be chaos and craft it into the articles which people actually want to read, which they can understand. But she was completely shaken through the rest of the morning - the interviews with the police and paramedics, worried exchanges with friends and relatives. She couldn’t get dark haired, combat booted, foul mouthed Carmilla out of her mind: with that came her beautiful, bloodied features; her husky, shaking voice. After finally collecting enough material to her satisfaction, she sent Betty out to the crash site for photos alone, despite her protests. It was approaching 11 and Carmilla would surely be wondering where she was. _Even if she wasn't going to admit it_ , Laura thought to herself a little defensively.

She stumbled across her in one of the corridors. Carmilla was sulking on a plastic chair and Laura couldn't have missed her; her pale pretty face was free from blood but her right arm was in a sling under her leather jacket and two slender legs were stretched out lazily before her, blocking half the way.

“Carmilla!” Laura called, relieved that she seemed fine. Her head snapped up and her eyes narrowed in recognition..

“Hey, road hazard,” she sighed, a lot of her earlier anger apparently gone.

“What's going on now?”

“With me?” Carmilla tried to shrug and ended up making a somewhat ridiculous one shoulder wiggle instead. “I'm alive, aren’t I? Doctor's in there if you care that much.” She jerked her head to the office door behind her.

“Of course I do!” Laura said automatically. She couldn't help but be wounded at the other girl's tone. Looked at that sad, elegant face which was speaking so callously, she couldn't imagine that this girl, despite her hard-bitten appearance and confrontational manner, didn't have people who cared about her.

The familiar doctor was writing at his desk; on Laura's entry he stood up with a small smile.

“How's Carmilla doing?”

“Well," the doctor gathered together his papers and stapled them with some finality, "she's probably avoided anything too serious and I plan to discharge her... I don't suppose you have any contact numbers for her? Friends, relatives…”

“No. I mean I've never met her before.”

He sighed. “Carmilla’s head is more or less fine but a concussion could still manifest itself in the next twenty-four hours. She needs to stay under someone’s observation until tomorrow morning, but the problem is that she refuses to get in touch with anyone to take her and look after her. We can't let her go alone and there's no spare bed here for this kind of injury.”  

Laura was quiet. She had a terrible suspicion she knew where this was going and she wasn't wrong. The doctor rooted around in his desk for something, delaying the inevitable, but after he found what he wanted he turned, papers in hand, and with an apologetic expression on his face.

“I don't suppose - you couldn't take her, could you? You'd be doing us all a huge favour, her as well... especially since you were the -”

“Please don't remind me that I'm responsible for this,” she groaned, rubbing at her forehead. The sensible thing would be to refuse and leave, spend the next couple of hours writing up her report at home and forget all this utter ridiculousness ever happened. “Why won’t she call anyone?”

The doctor hesitated. “To be perfectly honest, Ms Hollis, I’m not sure that she has anyone to call.”

Laura recalled Carmilla, lounging in the hospital corridor in bloody, dirty clothes, resigned, alone. She couldn't just leave her to sit alone in the hospital until God knew when. After all,she was the one who landed her here in the first place.

_She was such a sap._ “Fine. I'll take her home with me. At least until we can get in touch with someone who actually knows her.” Laura felt sort of like she'd just agreed to adopt a tarantula.

Outside Carmilla was swinging listlessly on her chair, picking at the shattered, hopelessly broken carcass of a black iPhone. She didn't bother to look up as the doctor cleared his throat timidly, and Laura suspected that he hadn’t had an easy morning with her. “Well, Miss Karnsteen -”

“Karn _stein_ . Rhymes with time, which by the way is precious to me, so if you want to get on and let me go, that’d be great.” She flicked a shard of screen onto the floor.

“Yes, well we've sorted that out, er, Miss Hollis will be taking you. She's under strict instructions to keep an eye on you until tomorrow and make sure you're quite alright, which, ahh...” he'd completely run out of sincerity by now, “I'm sure you're glad to hear.”

Carmilla's head snapped up at that and treated Laura to an incredulous, smouldering glare. She tried to ignore the sweat breaking out on her palms as that beautiful face barked out a harsh laugh. “You can't be serious. Doesn't James Dean here have something better to do? There's some nuns on their way back to their minibus if you need target practice,” she snapped to Laura, who felt her own fragile temper break in return.

“Okay, you're being incredibly rude to me, considering I came back to see how you were doing, and now I'm offering to get you out of here, which is totally not even my problem, by the way, but I thought it would be, you know, a good thing to do? I mean, turn it down if you'd like but you're not leaving any other way so let's see how comfortable that chair is in, like, four hours when I'm back chilling at mine and you're still here being a raging b- _bad person_ \- to anyone who thinks to offer you any kindness whatsoever!” Laura had to stop there to breathe; her fists were clenched by her side as she gave Carmilla her best glare.

But Carmilla didn't react to Laura's outburst other than to raise a perfect eyebrow. Then she stood, fluid in motion despite her obvious fragility. "Fine. Take me away, Schumi."

"You - what does that even  _mean_ ?"

Carmilla ignored her and held out an expectant hand to the doctor, who handed over the paperwork he was holding, as well as a box of painkillers. "Don't go crazy on them, okay? I don't want you back here with an OD." He looked at her with some concern.

"You don't want me back at all, doc. But thanks anyway," she waved a hand in his general direction as she followed a very irate Laura towards the exit, "and have fun with the invalids!"

 

* * *

 

The pair didn’t have much to say on the way back. At least no-one was possibly dying this time and Laura was quite happy to keep her eyes on the road for much of the journey. She kept her fans on - Carmilla was emitting an unfortunate smell of dried blood along with the stale cigarettes, alcohol and sweat that Laura recognised from her college days as the mark of a good old fashioned hangover. Coupled with the incident this morning, she must be feeling pretty rough.

Laura, though, was still curious about her. She glanced at the papers that had been chucked on the dashboard. "You live in the city?"

Carmilla grunted an affirmative.

"How did you end up all the way out here this morning?"

She was rewarded with another look of utter incredulity which immediately frayed her nerves. Eventually Carmilla answered, her tone strange and eyebrows somewhere in her hairline.  "Took a wrong turn. What do you  _think_ , cupcake?”

She was something else. "You know what, whatever. I'm just trying to make conversation but if that's not working for you we can just spend the whole time in silence, it's totally  _fine_ ." Her passenger slouched in her seat seeming a little chastised.

They were pulling back into Laura's neighbourhood when Carmilla spoke, sounding like a child being forced to ask after elderly relatives. "So... what do you do, erm..."

"Laura. It's Laura." She said flatly. "I'm a journalist for the local newspaper. I just got out of college last summer so this is kind of my first chance at the real thing, and the big crash this morning is my first big story, so when we get back I have to write all this up by like 12:30 to send over for editing and layouts before printing tomorrow morning..." Thinking about that little job, on top of everything else, was really not conducive to her mental state right now and Laura forced herself to let the sentence hang unfinished.

Carmilla whistled low. "You know it's already like midday, right?

_"Yes_ ," her hands tightened on the wheel, "I  _know_ , Carmilla."

Carmilla swung open her door and they both winced as the cold air hit them, but she hesitated, one leg out of the car. “Sorry about this. I know it must have screwed your work up.” Then she was out and slamming the panel behind her, heading hastily for Laura’s front door and looking rather perished in her black skinny jeans and leather jacket. By the time Laura had recovered from the shock of hearing Carmilla say something that wasn’t staggeringly aggressive or sarcastic, her guest was kicking impatiently at the door, moaning about the cold.

“I’m coming!” she snapped, fumbling hurriedly with her keys. Carmilla's intense eyes were on her again and it was making her nervous. “You know, you are so underdressed for winter out here.”

“Yeah well,” Carmilla suddenly flashed what could only be called a  _dangerous_ smirk at Laura as they got into the warmth of her house, “normally I’ve got someone around to keep me warm, buttercup.” Not even waiting to allow her to attempt some kind of response (the spluttering noise that was happening right now doesn’t count, she thought frantically), Carmilla twirled a pack of cigarettes in her free hand. “Somewhere I can smoke?”

Wordless, Laura pointed back at the front door and Carmilla slipped back out into the cold with a roll of her eyes. She'd just tugged her boots off when she heard her guest's voice call her name. She almost ignored her. But with a groan, she laced them right back up and trudged outside to see Carmilla frustratedly flicking her lighter against the wind with her one free hand, cigarette hanging from her lips. She raised her eyes to Laura. "Finally. Come light me up, would you?"

She sighed, stepping close to her. "Those things'll kill you, you know."

Carmilla only smirked again, cigarette bobbing between her red lips. As Laura cupped the cigarette, shielding it from the wind, she felt Carmilla's breath, warm on her fingers. The lighter trembled in her hand.

Finally it caught; with her functional hand Carmilla plucked the plastic from between Laura's fingers. "Thanks, cupcake." She turned her head to exhale the acrid smoke away from Laura's face, and the shorter girl, still standing there, felt curiously light-headed. Carmilla’s dark hair shone in the pale winter sunlight.

She left her smoking in the cold and set to typing up that morning's material on her laptop, determined not to waste any more time on her interloper. Carmilla sloped into the living room some minutes later and flopped onto the sofa. She turned on the TV. Laura kept working at her desk, presenting her back to the other woman's gaze.

After an hour or so of channel hopping, turning the volume up and down as she pleased and complaining to the room at large about the standard of entertainment on Canadian television, Carmilla stretched and turned back to Laura, who was pensively gazing at the finished report on her laptop screen. She wasn't happy with it. It seemed to waffle and her distinctive, clear writing style wasn't coming through. But she knew she couldn't push her deadline any more; her editor had already sent a text saying if it was much later it wouldn't be edited. The problem was, quite simply, that she'd been distracted all morning. But she was aware that she had to get used to it; she couldn't depend on optimal Sunday morning writing conditions her whole career.

Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted. "You want to grab us some lunch? I'm starving over here."

Laura felt her patience twang again and she slapped a hand impulsively against the desk. "Look, Carmilla, take what you want from the kitchen but can you please do it quietly because this whole thing is a disaster and it should have been finished like a half hour ago and I can't really concentrate so just let me get on with this in some peace before my boss fires me and I'll never work on a newspaper again!" She turned her eyes resolutely back to her laptop but after some seconds she felt Carmilla's presence behind her - or smelled it, in cigarette smoke and the last hints of yesterday's perfume. " _Carmilla -_ "

"You've finished? Let me have a look at it. I can help you."

"Ok I'm not sure that's necessary -"

"I spent yesterday morning marking undergrad papers on ‘moral codes as the ultimate expression of self-preservation in the herd behavioural structure of Judeo-Christian civilization’, sweetheart. Pretty sure I can handle this." And she gestured back to the laptop, her manner teasing but devoid of her previous venom. Reluctantly, Laura turned the screen to her, and Carmilla leaned over her shoulder to read it. Laura, feeling this whole affair was already embarrassing enough for her, avoided following her dreadful work alongside her and instead studied Carmilla, now thankfully distracted. This close she could accept how good the other woman's profile was, without the awkward conditions of their smoke break earlier: her aquiline, narrow nose was balanced by the strong, striking line of her jaw. Its aesthetics seemed to call for Laura to reach out and trace that line with her fingers. Carmilla tilted her head slightly; her jet-black hair brushed Laura’s shoulder and fell away from a neck that was pale and elegant. This close, she could feel her warmth. And okay, Laura had to admit, she was devastatingly attractive in a brooding, unapproachable, artist's muse sort of way - even with the stitched gash at her hairline; even with the bruising across her temple and high, defined cheekbone.

At least as long as she kept her mouth shut.

"Well, it's more village fête than major traffic accident in style, but if that's what you're going for..."

"It's  _obviously not_ what I'm _going for_."

"Hmm... alright, here you need to really communicate the suddenness of the accident, so cut this down..."

So, Laura had to admit, Carmilla did seem to know something about journalistic writing. The adjustments she suggested were obvious, were sensible, and Laura could only feel irritated that she hadn't caught them before. Afterwards, when the finished word file had been sent to her editor and her work saved and closed off the screen, Carmilla merely smiled before sloping into the kitchen.

Laura sat at her desk for a few moments longer, rubbing at tired eyes. The relief she felt at finishing her report was intense, and Carmilla's input had been invaluable - not that she would tell her that, of course.

Carmilla emerged then from the kitchen with two doorstop sized sandwiches made of what Laura guessed was basically everything in her fridge. At her raised eyebrows, Carmilla shrugged and pushed a plate in her hands. "I was hungry." She eyed Laura’s idle laptop. "You want to put Netflix on?"

Laura hesitated. "I meant to clean out the bathroom today, and do some laundry..."

"Come on, creampuff, it's a Sunday! Besides," Carmilla swooped and picked up the laptop, settling back down on Laura's sofa, "you've done enough work today, don't you think?" She patted the seat beside her, smirk fixed firmly onto her face again.

Laura had always been a sucker for hot girls. Even when they were this annoying, she was beginning to realize. With a sigh that she didn't really mean, she plonked herself down next to her guest and let Carmilla open up her account. She smirked some more at Laura's history and with mortification Laura remembered that what she'd watched in the last few months was all clear to see. And it was all extremely gay.

_Orange is the New Black, Blue is the Warmest Colour, My Summer of Love..._ and there was more.

"Wow, cupcake," Carmilla grinned, scrolling past  _Loving Annabelle_ , "you figuring something out? Or has your account been hacked by Tegan and Sara?"

Those nicknames were grating and Laura decided to shut it down. "I already have. Figured it out, I mean." she said flatly, fixing a hard stare on Carmilla and daring her to respond.

Carmilla turned and looked at her - really looked at her, her dark eyes darting over Laura's face, as though she was searching for something there. Laura stared back, indulging herself in the other girl's symmetrical features; trying not to get lost in them. The room seemed to buzz between them.

Finally, Carmilla replied, her voice even: "Me too."

_Does she mean -?_ The moment was lost, and Laura wasn't really sure what to say back. With a flush she recalled Carmilla's flirting at her doorstep.

"I just - you do know how horrible a representation of lesbian relationships  _Blue is the Warmest Colour_ is, right?"

This was agony. Laura’s face was hot. "I'm not 15, you know. I was bored."

Carmilla smirked again, her eyes no longer so serious. "Did you finish it?"

She shook her head. "I couldn't. It was torture."

Carmilla wiggled the cursor over it. "What do you say we try it again now?" She burst out laughing at Laura's expression of horror. "Kidding, kidding!" She took the slap she received on her shoulder with good grace, but Laura seriously wanted to sink into the floor with embarrassment. "You know that face of scandal you’ve been making all day is hilarious, buttercup."

Laura buried her face in her cushion as Carmilla’s musical laugh washed over her. "Forgive me for not wanting to watch  _pornography_ with someone I only just met this morning!" she choked out.

"Ok, ok," Carmilla’s laughter subsided and she passed the laptop to her, "you choose."  Laura dared to glance up at her again; for all the belligerent aura she gave off, she was only slightly taller than her. Those dark brown eyes were softer than she'd thought they could be.

Not that she'd noticed them at all, or anything.

They ended up watching some kind of American comedy set in a police precinct, which was good enough for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Laura laughed easily at the jokes, while Carmilla had the annoying habit of taking every single episode apart at the credits - and when she was particularly riled, before they even rolled. After the eighth time, Laura threw a cushion at her.

By the time Carmilla thought to stretch her legs and have another cigarette, the light had gone completely and Laura realised they'd been sat together for about four hours; the entire afternoon had slipped by quite unnoticed. It reminded her of her college days; of whiling away the weekends, doing anything at all or nothing at all, just being able to enjoy being with her friends. Or girlfriends. It occurred to her, as it occasionally did during late nights in front of her laptop or chats in the office with her new coworkers, that since those days she'd become lonely.

Laura grabbed Carmilla’s leather jacket still lying on the couch and followed her out. Carmilla smiled and held out her lighter in readiness. Laura offered her the jacket; she shrugged. "Put it on yourself. It gets more bitter than this in the mountains back home."

"You didn't like it so much this morning."

"I didn't like anything much this morning, sweetheart."

She shrugged and wrapped it around herself, aware that Carmilla was only wearing some kind of lacy t-shirt underneath it, half obscured by her sling. But whatever. She wrinkled her nose slightly at the odour that washed over her. "You need a shower."

Carmilla tapped at the stitches on her head. "Can't until tomorrow morning, thanks to these. Aren't you the lucky one?"

"That's gross."

Carmilla chuckled low in her throat. She took the cigarette from her mouth and breathed out a plume of grey smoke. "You're not seeing me at my best, I'll admit. Getting hit by a car does that to people."

Laura had almost forgotten. Her frantic journey to the hospital with a very pissed off, bleeding Carmilla in the passenger seat seemed very distant now; there was something almost dreamlike in her recollection of it. She blinked in surprise, head still in her car, when Carmilla, gazing at the stars above them, said distantly, almost carefully: "Thanks. For this morning, I mean."

"What, for running you down?" Laura responded stupidly. There appeared to be no way of predicting where on earth Carmilla would take a conversation.

"Are you really gonna make me have to drag this out? For taking me to hospital, you asshole." She took a last, long drag from the cigarette butt before stamping it underfoot and Laura couldn't help but look in distaste at where it must have fallen in the darkness. "And...for bringing me back here. I appreciate that."

"What are you going to do now?" Laura asked. "Do you want to call someone off my phone? Since yours kinda gave up the ghost..."

She sighed. "Laura, there's no one to call."

She was still trying to form a response to that, feeling wretched, when Carmilla continued, "you'll have to go to work in town tomorrow, right?" At Laura's nod she continued, "you can just drop me off then. I mean if it's okay..." she paused to take a deep breath and Laura suspected that finding the words for this scenario was difficult for her, "can I stay the night? I wouldn't ask but I'm not sure I have many other options right now."

She could hardly turn her away. She wasn’t sure she even remotely wanted to. "Of course!" Laura reached out without thinking and touched Carmilla’s arm. "I mean I've only got the sofa but we'll get some blankets down, it'll be fine..." She could see something strange in the girl’s dark eyes; something that looked like it hadn’t been there in a long time.

"That’s fine," Carmilla eventually said, heading back inside. "I've slept in worse places before, believe me."

"Wow, you really know how to compliment a girl's...housekeeping," Laura muttered feebly behind her, trying to lighten the mood. With relief she thought Carmilla hadn't heard; at least until she walked right into her in the dark hallway,  _why were the lights still off_ ?

"That's not what I usually compliment a girl for, sweetheart," Carmilla smirked, too close to her face.

Laura's brain almost short circuited at her low tone and ok, it was definitely obvious now that she was very, very attracted to this woman. At least physically.  _Oh, darn it._ She swallowed. "Yeah? What would you usually compliment this girl for, then?" Her voice had come out embarrassingly breathy; without thinking she licked her lips.

Carmilla's gaze raked over her as she let out a low hum of contemplation, and the moment hung for the longest time. Laura found herself wondering how Carmilla’s lips would feel under hers.  _Definitely soft. Probably still smirking..._

Then her guest let out a laugh. "Maybe your cooking. Want to give me a demonstration?"

Laura now knew how it felt to have one's jaw physically drop.  _She is unbelievable_ . She tried not to pout as she pushed past Carmilla and stomped into the kitchen. "If you were hungry, you could have just asked!"

"And miss all that bunched up pouting you do when you're angry? Not a chance, buttercup."

Laura slammed the cupboard door, blushing furiously. "I'm not making faces," Laura brandished a spatula in a sniggering Carmilla’s direction, "and these nicknames have  _got_ to stop!"

"Sure thing, sundance. Honeybunch. Carebear."

" _Carmilla_."

"Sugarlump. Oooh, I've got a good one!"

"I really don't want to hear it -!"

"Lauronica Mars! Oh my god -!" Her laughter echoed around the kitchen.

**"**... you're the worst."

 

* * *

 

 

Of course Carmilla was less than zero help in the kitchen. Reminding Laura that one of her arms was in a sling really was not the best way to get her sympathy when all she asked for was if she could fetch a knife from the block and by the time Laura commanded her to set the table she sloped off muttering about needing the toilet.  She didn't come back for almost 10 minutes.

Nevertheless they enjoyed a passable mushroom stir fry together and Carmilla even dried a plate for her before deciding that needling Laura about the photos on her fridge was a far more interesting activity. She only stopped when Laura threatened to drive her back to hospital with a fish slice somewhere unpleasant, and spent the rest of the time teaching her German and Austrian swear words to use in bars. Laura couldn’t quite believe how broad her vocabulary stretched in _that_ particular area.

Afterwards, Carmilla assured her that she seemed to be avoiding concussion, and the pair parked themselves in front of Netflix again, enjoying their sudden easy camaraderie. There was a brief break in their broadcast of some made for TV movie about a cat that saved its family from a house fire when Laura received a text of congratulations from her editor on a "top-class" article for tomorrow; she squealed into the sofa back for some minutes and high-fived a very amused Carmilla, who surprisingly managed to hold off from pointing out her own contributions to that article.

It was only when the credits of _Tiddles in Time 4_ were rolling, some hours later, that Laura noticed Carmilla was dozing in her seat; she shut off the laptop and grabbed some blankets from her room. Carmilla looked younger as she slept and Laura wondered how much of the leather and swearing and snark and cigarettes was a persona. Behind it was - _what? A girl who stares at the stars and talks about Schopenhauer? Who helps you with your work? You know_ nothing _about her._ Well, maybe she could find out.

By the time Laura had changed for bed and brought a glass of water through for Carmilla, she was just about awake and pulling off her sling, her jeans a crumpled pile on the floor. "I'm not usually like this," she murmured, popping two more painkillers into her palm, "these tablets have knocked me out."

"Don't worry about it," Laura replied, absently folding Carmilla’s jeans and placing her sling on top of them at the foot of the sofa, "do you want to take my bed? It’s probably more comfortable.”

She shook her head, “I’m fine here. Too much effort to move.”

“Well, if you’re sure...what still hurts?"

"Head, mostly," Carmilla had cocooned herself in Laura’s extra duvet, "arm, a bit. But i just want to sleep it off."

"Well, you've been up a long time. Sleeping will definitely help you feel better." Laura hesitated. "If you need me just come wake me up."

"I'm not a child." Carmilla protested weakly. Laura let herself brush her hand over Carmilla's forehead; she wondered if it was her imagination telling her that the other girl had leaned into her touch.

"I know you’re not. Sleep well, Carmilla."

"Night, cupcake." That word sounded very familiar out of her mouth.

Laura smiled to herself as she turned out the living room lamp and shut her bedroom door behind her. Battered and bruised and drowsy off prescription drugs, there was still something comforting about Carmilla's presence in the room opposite. It had been a long time since she hadn't settled for the night in a still, empty house.

She only got through a couple of chapters of her novel before she felt her eyes begin to droop. Laura turned out her light and drifted easily, the last hazy pictures in her mind evoking Carmilla’s dark soft hair, her low laugh.

* * *

****

When Laura's alarm jerked her out of sleep at 6:30 prompt the next morning, her eyes immediately fell to the note she'd left herself on her bedside table. Check on Carmilla. She swung her legs out of bed, feeling immediately awake, and crept into the living room. Carmilla was sleeping peacefully on the sofa, her breathing regular and slow. Unfortunately, they had be in the car soon if she wanted dropping off; Laura started at 7.30 on the dot. Laura crouched and gently squeezed her shoulder. "Carmilla? Carmilla, we need to get up now..." She felt terrible for waking her so early.

Eventually, Carmilla let out a grumble in response. " _Bin schon wach...lass mich.._ ."

"Carmilla." Laura couldn't help but smile. "You're talking in German again."

Her eyes cracked open and she immediately let out a groan of dismay at the sight of Laura, who couldn't help but feel a stab of disappointment. Carmilla rolled up, holding her injured arm to her chest, and the duvet pooled around her exposed thighs. "So... the part where I got run down in the street and then kidnapped wasn't a nightmare, then." Her voice was rough with tiredness.

"It wasn't a kidnapping, don't be so dramatic," she sighed, trying to avoid glancing at the creamy skin of Carmilla's bare legs which stopped only at her small red panties. "And you seemed happy enough yesterday."

"Yesterday was yesterday," she grumbled, stretching out her back and revealing the smooth skin of her flat pale stomach, right at Laura's eyeline. "Now is not a time to ever be happy. It's, like, -"

"It’s six-thirty. I have to be in the car at seven, Carmilla." Laura stood, wondering how someone so acutely irritating could also be so attractive to her befuddled early morning brain. "I'm getting in the shower, you can use it after me if you want." She left her there, feeling strangely crestfallen as she stripped in the bathroom. Maybe their weird bubble of isolation and actually getting along yesterday had burst. After all, she _had_ come across as a massive douche before helping Laura with her report and then commandeering her Netflix account. No matter how much she could turn on the charm when she wanted something. But then, maybe she was just feeling yesterday. Maybe, Laura thought tentatively, she would cheer up after a coffee or two.

They'd probably never see each other again after Laura dropped her off anyway. She scrubbed at herself in the shower, pushing her conflicting feelings about that out of her mind.  

Carmilla stumbled half undressed into the bathroom after her and Laura focused on making toast and boiling the kettle for tea. She didn't really mind her early morning starts; as long as she'd gotten enough sleep the night before, she quite enjoyed them. Carmilla was evidently not of the same mind and the minutes she spent in the shower ticked by. Laura was debating charging in there and dragging her out herself when Carmilla finally appeared in Laura’s own olive green tank top, which she'd evidently forgotten to take back to her room, and the perennial black jeans, towelling her hair dry. "Can you get me some coffee, sweetheart?" She threw over her shoulder, grabbing her jacket and heading for the door with her cigarettes.

"You can't light those, Carmilla!" She followed with irritation, "and you need to put your sling on..."

After that was dealt with and Carmilla had a cup of strong black coffee in her hand (she was apparently _extremely_ pigheaded before her morning caffeine fix and Laura automatically filed it for future reference), she stood smoking on the steps outside while Laura collected what she needed for work. They were going to be late at this rate. With a huff of long-suffering, she picked up Carmilla’s dirty shirt abandoned on her bathroom floor, which she appeared to have left in an absolute mess, and locked the front door behind her, briefcase awkwardly under her arm. Immediately she heard a shout of confrontation from the street and when Laura found its source to be approaching her drive she could only wonder which deity she had pissed off so acutely this weekend.

The girl who lived on the corner, suited for work, car keys in hand, was marching over to Carmilla on the front step with murder in her eyes. "You _bitch_!" she yelled. Laura almost jumped out of her skin.

"Oh hey, Elise," Carmilla replied reluctantly.

"It's Elsie, _Carmilla_." Elsie had walked right up to the shorter girl and was brandishing her car keys in her face with an aggressive jingle. "You sneak out of mine without even dropping me a text yesterday and now you're leaving with her? Did you jump straight from my bed into my goddamn _neighbour's_?"   

"What does it matter if I did? Just because we've fucked a few times doesn't make us exclusive, you know," Carmilla’s voice was venomous despite how calm she appeared to be, "it's not like you'd ever be enough for me, Elsie, and I told you that, so if you can't handle it, then don't blame me."

“Did you have to do it in my front fucking garden?! With this -” she gestured at Laura with a curl of her lip, who was stumped for words. Why was Carmilla such a goddamned _wrecking ball_?

“Hey!” Carmilla shouted with sudden anger, leaving her control behind to square up to Elsie. “Leave her out of it - or I swear, you’ll be picking up what’s left of your teeth with a dustpan and brush.” Elsie quailed momentarily; Carmilla suddenly seemed to tower over her.

"Ok, ok," Laura decided now was the time to intervene, "we have to go now. Elsie, you have the complete wrong idea and I’m sorry but I really don't have time to explain, Carm, can you get in the car now, please?"

Carmilla looked at her for a long moment before turning to the door behind her and swinging it open, ignoring Elsie's scandalized repetition of "Carm? _Carm_?! You know what, don't bother waiting for my call, bitch!"

She turned back to her with the smirk back on her face and threw the broken remains of her phone at Elsie. "Changing my number anyway. Have a nice life.” The car started; Carmilla rolled down the window to yell, “Oh, I lied on Saturday: you did look fat in that dress!"

Laura pulled away before Elsie could, like, slash her tires or something and gave an incredulous look towards Carmilla, who was now fiddling with the radio. "What?"

"That's why you were wondering around at like 8 in the morning yesterday? You were walk of shaming all the way back to town?"

"Bus of shaming I guess. But yeah," Carmilla flashed her an amused grin, "I thought that was obvious. You're so provincial."

"Am not!" Laura felt a strange prickle of unease down her back. "Now my neighbour hates me, thanks."

" _Ach_ ," Carmilla shrugged, "believe me, you can do better than her anyway. The girl's a total bore. She wasn't even very good in bed." That was an image she didn't need and now she was definitely blushing.

"Do you really do that?" The words burst out of her before she could stop them. "Just... hook up with girls who like you? You don’t even date them?"

Carmilla was silent for a while. "I haven't done relationships in a long time, sweetheart. This is just how I work. None of those girls have ever interested me past the physical. And they know that's all it'll be. I don't lie about it," she grinned without humour, “I’m not that big of a jerk.”

"Aren't you lonely like that?"

Carmilla's fist clenched on her thigh and Laura wondered if she'd made her angry. When she spoke, she sounded strange. "I wasn't."

The warning signals rolling off her right now were strong enough that Laura knew not to push and when they approached the city limits, she changed the subject, asking Carmilla where she lived. At first the girl just said to drop her off at the metro station on Laura's way but she point blank refused, threatening to take Carmilla to work with her if she couldn't get her to her doorstep. So with a laugh back in her voice, Carmilla directed her to an apartment complex in a poorer area of town. Laura looked at the grey breezeblock dubiously.

Carmilla shrugged one shoulder. "I'm a student, remember? If I don't want a roommate I can't exactly set my hopes high."

She sighed and as Carmilla got out of the car she followed. "You're sure you'll be alright?"

"Don't worry about me, cupcake. You're going to be late for work." She was fiddling with her sling, avoiding Laura’s eyes.

Laura dived back into her car and grabbed Carmilla's top out of the back, thrusting it at her chest. "That's yours."

Carmilla balled it in her fist. "...Thanks. Guess I owe you this one back later."

“That’s usually how ownership works, yes.” But Laura wasn’t sure it would, in this case. That filled her with a strange wistfulness. They both looked at each other for a second but Carmilla didn’t speak. Laura couldn’t find her nerve. "Well," she smiled, trying to sound casual, "I guess I'll see you around, Carmilla."

Carmilla was looking at her strangely but made no reply and Laura resigned herself to her silence, turning away from the unfathomable, remote woman. She opened her car door and hesitated.

"Wait!" She spun back to see Carmilla walking back towards her. She stopped rather closer to Laura than she’d anticipated and she caught her breath.

"Let me take you to dinner," Carmilla said abruptly. "To thank you properly, I mean. I probably owe you that."

Laura's heart skipped a beat. "What, like a date?" She swallowed, immediately wishing she could take back the words that would obviously make Carmilla turn and run.

But Carmilla looked at her evenly. "If you want it to be. Yeah. A date."

She felt the smile stretch across her face, and the blush on her neck, and she knew that playing it cool was out of the window when a slow, lazy smile spread across on Carmilla’s beautiful features in response.

"Cool!" she squeaked, "when do you want to meet up?" Flipping open her phone, she gasped as she saw the time. " _Crap_ , Carm, I'm gonna be late!"

Carmilla was clearly trying not to laugh. "You got a pen?" Laura fumbled around in her purse. When she pulled it out triumphantly, Carmilla wriggled her good arm halfway out of her tight jacket sleeve, snorted in exasperation and gave up whatever her original plan was, presenting her bare bicep to Laura. "Write down your number so I can call you."

Quickly, she did so, giggling as Carmilla twitched under the tickle of the pen. Carmilla glanced down, read out the numbers stretching sideways down her arm, and nodded in satisfaction. "Great. Now get to work, I'll call as soon as I get a new phone."

She was still so close to her. Laura wanted to state her intention loud and clear. She leaned up and, before she could lose her nerve, pressed a firm kiss to Carmilla’s jawline, finally feeling her warmth. "Don't forget. I'll see you soon."

Carmilla was actually blushing. Laura wouldn't have thought she knew how to. "I won't," she said quietly. "See you, road hazard."

“One time! It was one time!” Laura rolled her eyes good-naturedly as she jumped back into her car, waiting until Carmilla had disappeared into the apartment complex before she pulled away.

Laura turned the radio up and sang along loudly to the Taylor Swift song as the sun rose fully, pale and sparkling and bright over the Edmonton skyline. It wasn't until the final bars of _Everything Has Changed_ faded out that she remembered she should probably get her head out of the clouds and focus on the road again. She wasn't sure she wanted a repeat of yesterday. No matter how well it had turned out in the end.

Laura thought of Carmilla, standing in the delicate fledgling dawn with promise ghosting over her face. _A date_.

Once, she smiled to herself, was definitely enough for her.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks guys, feel free to visit my tumblr @ viele-kleine-leute
> 
> Would love to hear any feedback you can offer!


End file.
